What is Digg?237 Comments
- LucasKane, on 11/14/2007, -6/+215eh.. I'll just keep waiting for the usb cable connection to my brain so I can just download them all
- yomamaisfat, on 11/11/2007, -1/+139Just learn the basic curse words and a few stock phrases like "Where's the bathroom?" Then just say yes or no depending on body language cues and hope for the best.
- Wiini, on 11/11/2007, -17/+153I wonder if they'll teach me the sweet sweet language of love.
Oh it's ladies night... oh what a night. - Richandler, on 11/09/2007, -2/+71I would have liked to see his writings and papers for how he actually broke them down.
- marsbar, on 11/11/2007, -7/+72I'll just wait for everyone else to learn English.
- SyntraFTW, on 11/09/2007, -5/+68Neat! Now it'll be easier to learn Klingon!
- unearth, on 11/14/2007, -0/+58I must give it to him.
I want to give it to her.
Sounds like this young man is confused! - admdrew, on 11/12/2007, -0/+49In 60 hours you've yet to discover the language is not called "Arab?"
- Twoodge, on 11/11/2007, -11/+59In Soviet Russia, Rus... oh ***** it.
- edicius, on 11/11/2007, -14/+53This post is by request. How long does it take to learn Chinese or Japanese vs. Spanish or Irish Gaelic? I would argue less than an hour.
Here’s the reasoning…
Before you invest (or waste) hundreds and thousands of hours on a language, you should deconstruct it. During my thesis research at Princeton, which focused on neuroscience and unorthodox acquisition of Japanese by native English speakers, as well as when redesigning curricula for Berlitz, this neglected deconstruction step surfaced as one of the distinguishing habits of the fastest language learners.
So far, I’ve deconstructed Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Norwegian, Irish Gaelic, Korean, and perhaps a dozen others. I’m far from perfect in these languages, and I’m terrible at some, but I can converse in quite a few with no problems whatsoever—just ask the MIT students who came up to me last night and spoke in multiple languages.
How is it possible to become conversationally fluent in one of these languages in 2-12 months? It starts with deconstructing them, choosing wisely, and abandoning all but a few of them.
Consider a new language like a new sport.
There are certain physical prerequisites (height is an advantage in basketball), rules (a runner must touch the bases in baseball), and so on that determine if you can become proficient at all, and—if so—how long it will take.
Languages are no different. What are your tools, and how do they fit with the rules of your target?
If you’re a native Japanese speaker, respectively handicapped with a bit more than 20 phonemes in your language, some languages will seem near impossible. Picking a compatible language with similar sounds and word construction (like Spanish) instead of one with a buffet of new sounds you cannot distinguish (like Chinese) could make the difference between having meaningful conversations in 3 months instead of 3 years.
Let’s look at few of the methods I recently used to deconstructed Russian and Arabic to determine if I could reach fluency within a 3-month target time period. Both were done in an hour or less of conversation with native speakers sitting next to me on airplanes.
Six Lines of Gold
Here are a few questions that I apply from the outset. The simple versions come afterwards:
1. Are there new grammatical structures that will postpone fluency? (look at SOV vs. SVO, as well as noun cases)
2. Are there new sounds that will double or quadruple time to fluency? (especially vowels)
3. How similar is it to languages I already understand? What will help and what will interfere? (Will acquisition erase a previous language? Can I borrow structures without fatal interference like Portuguese after Spanish?)
4. All of which answer: How difficult will it be, and how long would it take to become functionally fluent?
It doesn’t take much to answer these questions. All you need are a few sentences translated from English into your target language.
Some of my favorites, with reasons, are below:
The apple is red.
It is John’s apple.
I give John the apple.
We give him the apple.
He gives it to John.
She gives it to him.
These six sentences alone expose much of the language, and quite a few potential deal killers.
First, they help me to see if and how verbs are conjugated based on speaker (both according to gender and number). I’m also able to immediately identify an uber-pain in some languages: placement of indirect objects (John), direct objects (the apple), and their respective pronouns (him, it). I would follow these sentences with a few negations (“I don’t give…”) and different tenses to see if these are expressed as separate words (“bu” in Chinese as negation, for example) or verb changes (“-nai” or “-masen” in Japanese), the latter making a language much harder to crack.
Second, I’m looking at the fundamental sentence structure: is it subject-verb-object (SOV) like English and Chinese (“I eat the apple”), is it subject-object-verb (SOV) like Japanese (“I the apple eat”), or something else? If you’re a native English speaker, SOV will be harder than the familiar SVO, but once you pick one up (Korean grammar is almost identical to Japanese, and German has a lot of verb-at-the-end construction), your brain will be formatted for new SOV languages.
Third, the first three sentences expose if the language has much-dreaded noun cases. What are noun cases? In German, for example, “the” isn’t so simple. It might be der, das, die, dem, den and more depending on whether “the apple” is an object, indirect object, possessed by someone else, etc. Headaches galore. Russian is even worse. This is one of the reasons I continue to put it off.
All the above from just 6-10 sentences! Here are two more:
I must give it to him.
I want to give it to her.
These two are to see if auxiliary verbs exist, or if the end of the each verb changes. A good short-cut to independent learner status, when you no longer need a teacher to improve, is to learn conjugations for “helping” verbs like “to want,” “to need,” “to have to,” “should,” etc. In Spanish and many others, this allows you to express yourself with “I need/want/must/should” + the infinite of any verb. Learning the variations of a half dozen verbs gives you access to all verbs. This doesn’t help when someone else is speaking, but it does help get the training wheels off self-expression as quickly as possible.
If these auxiliaries are expressed as changes in the verb (often the case with Japanese) instead of separate words (Chinese, for example), you are in for a rough time in the beginning.
Sounds and Scripts
I ask my impromptu teacher to write down the translations twice: once in the proper native writing system (also called “script” or “orthography”), and again in English phonetics, or I’ll write down approximations or use IPA.
If possible, I will have them take me through their alphabet, giving me one example word for each consonant and vowel. Look hard for difficult vowels, which will take, in my experience, at least 10 times longer to master than any unfamiliar consonant or combination thereof (”tsu” in Japanese poses few problems, for example). Think Portuguese is just slower Spanish with a few different words? Think again. Spend an hour practicing the “open” vowels of Brazilian Portuguese. I recommend you get some ice for your mouth and throat first.
Going through the characters of a language’s writing system is really only practical for languages that have at least one phonetic writing system of 50 or fewer sounds—Spanish, Russian, and Japanese would all be fine. Chinese fails since tones multiply variations of otherwise simple sounds, and it also fails miserably on phonetic systems. If you go after Mandarin, choose the somewhat uncommon GR over pinyin romanization if at all possible. It’s harder to learn at first, but I’ve never met a pinyin learner with tones even half as accurate as a decent GR user. Long story short, this is because tones are indicated by spelling in GR, not by diacritical marks above the syllables.
In all cases, treat language as sport.
Learn the rules first, determine if it’s worth the investment of time (will you, at best, become mediocre?), then focus on the training. Picking your target is often more important than your method.
[To be continued?]
### - batshitcrazy, on 11/14/2007, -1/+38norwegian girls are so hot
- themastersb, on 11/10/2007, -5/+41Language learns you!
- Elranzer, on 11/09/2007, -2/+36I know... Kung-Fu?
- Elderon, on 11/10/2007, -0/+32Interesting post but effectively useless im afraid. He went on about how great it works to break these languages down but he doesn't show you how. Good tips about those couple sentences but other than that nothing special. We need to see an effective example on how he deconstructed and learned a languange, say french or arabic or something otherwise his post is all show and no game.
- captainsdead, on 11/08/2007, -0/+31sabado gigante here i come! i must know what is so damn funny.
- Cowfrommars, on 11/14/2007, -3/+33How to Learn to Take Down Any Server in 1 hour.
- Kruez, on 11/13/2007, -0/+28Finally, pig latin is within reach!!
- mitchlourens, on 11/09/2007, -0/+25for a second i thought that was another language like in the posts above...
- inactive, on 11/09/2007, -0/+25This sounds to me like how to judge how difficult a language is to learn - not how to actually learn it. Not sure I can digg this, given the title. Someone sell to me that he's actually showing how to learn as per the title, rather than just understand how hard it will be.
- IllBeBack, on 11/09/2007, -3/+28Nachos Bel Grande!
See, I know Spanish now. - theuniversal, on 11/09/2007, -0/+24There are no shortcuts to learning a language. The article is has some good tips, like approaching a language as a sport (ie. it's about practice not memorization of rules). But the title is retarded. No different than "how to make millions in an hour" or "how to get an MIT degree in 10 minutes". Like most worthwhile things in life, learning a language is hard work. It takes discipline and lots of practice. There's no shortcut for the lazy and unmotivated. Anyone can do it, but if you're not up for a tough long haul, don't even bother.
- danwallace, on 11/09/2007, -1/+22Para bailar la bamba.
- jcroisant4, on 11/09/2007, -0/+20I have a serial port . . . but that is where I put my corn flakes . . .
- theuniversal, on 11/09/2007, -3/+23"1. Are there new grammatical structures that will postpone fluency? (look at SOV vs. SVO, as well as noun cases)"
Going from English to Japanese or Chinese, the answer to this question alone would fill thousands of pages. One hour my ass. The article has a few reasonable tips but the "one hour" in the title is completely meaningless. - atozand1to10, on 11/09/2007, -0/+19Nice try at hindi but "website" is feminine so it should be "yeh *wali* website boht der lagaati hai"
- khellendros1984, on 11/09/2007, -0/+19Is it sad that I understood both of those phrases?
- altrego99, on 11/10/2007, -2/+21When you are in Rome, err... do the Romans.
- aprenot, on 11/11/2007, -8/+27Excellent article. It re-motivated me to learn Russian
- sgoogle, on 11/08/2007, -1/+20American is not a language, just a hacked up version of English
- billib, on 11/09/2007, -2/+20poshol nahui !
- KyleGoetz, on 11/11/2007, -2/+20どうしてローマ字で書いてるんだよ、コラ！？
Translation for mods: Why the ***** are you writing in Roman characters?! - SiNN4R, on 11/11/2007, -1/+19I've downloaded Rosetta Stone.. err I mean bought Rosetta Stone to learn Japanese but couldn't sit there for the time needed. With this maybe I'll give it another go and try my luck. I was actually getting the begining level of it but I did need to put a lot of time into it so put it off.
- TekTrixter, on 11/09/2007, -0/+17yes
- kinggimped, on 11/09/2007, -0/+16I found learning Hiragana and Katakana very easy, I had it down pat within a week. Then Kanji came along and I just couldn't handle it. Remembering all the alternate readings and contextually-specific meanings, stroke order, and just recognising the bloody things... couldn't get my head around it before.
Actually learning spoken Japanese isn't as challenging as everybody says it is - it requires a decent grasp of grammar, an ability to absorb new vocabulary quickly, and enough enthusiasm for the language that you practice daily and do the necessary work.
Japanese grammar is actually very logical and analytical, especially when compared with English. There are comparatively few irregularities, no distinction between singular/plural, no definite article, and particles (esp. wa, ga & o) help you determine the sentence structure. It only really starts getting hard when you start tackling longer sentences and their equivalent to subordinate clauses, as well as the afore-mentioned Kanji.
To those that want to learn Japanese, don't be put off by its reputation as a difficult language. Unless you start young, comprehension of Kanji can evade you for your entire life, but as far as the actual spoken language goes, it just requires a keen mind, common sense, and most importantly, the enthusiasm for daily practice.
Oh, and watching anime does not count as 'practice'. There's only so many times you can learn the word "yurusanai". - AriaStar, on 11/08/2007, -0/+16Используйте надлежащие характеры!
(In English: Use appropriate characters! ) - Herald42, on 11/09/2007, -0/+16Er, he re-posted the article here because people were complaining about the site being down.
Next time read a comment/article before you criticize, please. - DirtySnachez, on 11/08/2007, -0/+16My favourite part is how he begs other bloogers to link him so he can game Technorati.
FTA
Odds and Ends:
Please help me break the Technorati 1000 today!
I’m around 1070 on Technorati’s rankings, and it’s killing me. Can those of you with blogs PULEEEEASE register your blogs with Technorati and find something interesting to link to on this 4HWW blog? It would really be a milestone for me and I’m so close! Just breaking 1000 would be enough. If you can find something to link to in the most popular posts or elsewhere, please do whatever you can in the next 24-36 hours! Thanks so much :) - PinkoComrade, on 11/09/2007, -1/+16eye lerns it gud wit hukt ahn fonix
- mattcoady, on 11/09/2007, -0/+15How many people just ran to babel fish?
- computergod, on 11/09/2007, -1/+15Sarcasm and parody is lost on some people.
- Elranzer, on 11/11/2007, -0/+14Rosetta Stone is great for the speaking/listening aspect (which makes it good for French and Spanish) but it's balls horrible for learning a new writing system. Your best bet for that is good ol' books or different software.
- xkorbin, on 11/09/2007, -0/+14USB 3 is making this possible.
- KyleGoetz, on 11/08/2007, -0/+12I really hate the author of the blog. Tim Ferriss basically gets to travel the world whenever he wants, running his web company out of cybercafes wherever he happens to be that day. That's why he wrote the book "The 4-Hour Workweek." I wish I could do that, too, but I need a little more security and a little less risk. I suppose if you're still unattached, it's good fun for a few years to do it his way.
In my opinion, that's the /real/ way he's learnt all these languages: by actually going to those places. - mathmanjeffy, on 11/08/2007, -0/+12Because they are anime loving *****.
- IllBeBack, on 11/08/2007, -0/+12Ka PLAH!!!
- 9a3eedi, on 11/11/2007, -1/+13Yes, but does it work on programming languages too? didn't think so..
- wshs, on 11/08/2007, -0/+12Dugg up for "balls horrible"
- Roryking, on 11/08/2007, -1/+13Did you read the article?
- inactive, on 11/11/2007, -4/+15I wish the people who made WordPress word actually learn just one programming language....
- thealliedhacker, on 11/08/2007, -0/+11Yeah, you'll get USB 2.0, then 3.0 will come around and you'll have to upgrade your brain?
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